Be the Right Type of Person, Before Trying to Be the Right Type of Man

I don’t know about you men, but I am worried about us.

The world is changing fast, and we are expected to change with it. But men don’t do fast change. In fact, any change of plan, even on a day-to-day level, can be a cause of consternation for many of us.

I think that most of us men are genuinely somewhere on the autistic spectrum. This is just a matter of how our brains are wired. We are often task driven, goal focused, inflexible, pattern loving, pack driven and emotionally analogue animals.

How we are constructed is nothing to apologize for, it has made us a valuable part of the social group for thousands of years. The ability to maintain a focus on an end goal, at the cost of all else, has yielded huge benefits in the survival game. But our physiological make-up is not always conducive to the emotional dexterity that is required today.

As our society openly questions all conventions in an often furious online and in-person debate, so the old, accepted archetypes of what it is to be a man can be invalidated.

The dearth of strong positive male role models in the social media space is, much like the current global political swing, causing a shift to the right and towards the tangibility of the strong man. This vacuum is quickly filled with bad actors such as Andrew Tate who play into this endemic insecurity with supposedly affirming ideas of misogyny, sexism and male dominance. Like a wolf calling to the disparate pack.

Modern society and the MeToo movement have shone a light on men’s collective responsibility within their social groups, especially toward the opposite sex. The equality and diversity messaging that pours out through the media and its interpretation by the ever more confident Millennials, Generation Z, Generation Alpha and Generation Beta has inadvertently created a confusing message for many young men.

The simple, underlying message of equality and respect is somehow lost in a burgeoning generational identity crisis.

I am certain that most men do not want anything remotely resembling a return to a male dominated society, but the process of making a correction, of breaking the spell of silence concerning men’s historic dominion over women, is fraught with challenge. At the heart of this lies accountability, or the lack of it.

What has changed fundamentally is the concept of entitlement in men. The premise that men simply took what they wanted, in many western cultures at least, has been rebuffed. The use of power and coerciveness has not been acceptable for a very long time, but it has still been widely practiced. Since the MeToo movement shattered any illusions about what was still going on for thousands of women worldwide, of how many powerful men still took whatever they wanted in a bubble of fear and silence, this has percolated down fast to the wider male populace.

The notion that many women still live everyday in fear is a sobering reality. Not just women in warzones. But women in plush offices with coffee machines and soft leather sofas. Because of Men.

The meeting of the MeToo movement with the growing voice of feminism* created a powerful wave of social assimilation that still gathers force to this day. These shockwaves are sweeping through the male disposition with such energy that male identity itself is under wholesale review.

*Feminism is not man hating. It is the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes.

So, how might we be good men in 2025?

The Opposite Sex

Men and Women are different.

Celebrate it.

We have to listen to what women are telling us and to properly listen, we have to be able to empathize and try to see the female perspective. Our needs are important, we should not just blow with the wind, but we cannot let our own desires be all-consuming. We have to make space for other’s needs amongst our own, then we can find balance.

We can’t change if we don’t firstly try to overcome our selfish predilections. This does not have to be emasculating.

The physical difference between men and women is central to much of this. Listen to Saiorse Ronan talk about the prospect of being attacked, in relation to which she says,

“That’s what girls have to think about all the time”.

Toxic Masculinity

Inevitably, when the male identity is challenged and a more nuanced, reflective and considerate model of maleness emerges, one that might require more social instinct than reliance on worn-out Man-made traditions, there will appear a moral vacuum.

Hence the rise of the Alt Right.

For many men who feel that their entire masculine identity is under threat, this is a seemingly safe place to hide with other like-minded, angry men.

These groups are full of bad actors, disgorging hate rhetoric, magnified through social media to a willing body of listeners.

They do not seek to enlighten their members, only to feed into a sense of persecution and hate.

Most women do not hate men. They just want a level playing field and to be seen.

Our different personas

We are not just one person.

Being a man is not a linear construct.

Celebrate our different sides — diversify, digress and embrace all of ourselves.

Move in different crowds and mix with people who tap different parts of our personality

Being a stereotypical man can be exhausting, we should give ourselves a break.

Build some new rooms to visit.

Spend more time listening than talking.

Friends

A good friend is someone who makes us feel better about ourselves.

It is OK to walk away from toxic friendships — are they even friendships, or just bad habits?

True friends are part of our connectedness, part of our support network throughout our lives.

It is a symbiotic relationship — it has to benefit everyone.

Keep the friends who celebrate our growth.

Beware of The Pack

The safety of the pack is an illusion

Our identity cannot flourish in the pack — we only assume the form and the behaviours of the group.

We are not an individual if we live in the pack.

Having a large group of mates is a good thing — but only if we can all operate as individuals who celebrate one another.

An amorphous pack, hell bent on conformity to its own rules, scoffing at difference and self-expression, is reductive.

Give ourselves a chance to make it on our own and our true friends will see us for the first time.

The pack animals will smirk and turn away.

Assertiveness does not have to be aggressiveness

Sometimes we might find it hard to communicate what we want — we might feel misunderstood.

We hear our own voice, and it sounds weak.

This can make us feel angry.

We should take a moment to clamber up from our brain stem (primal instincts) back into our cortex (rational thought) — now we can think about what it is that we want to say. Without anger.

We can now explain, rationally, why this is important to us.

Our authentic, rationale voice is not weak, it is reason and strength.

Our Parents

Understanding their role in who we are today. Good or Bad.

Are we stuck with their legacy — or can we tread our own path?

The impact of our parents, whether they were present or absent during our upbringing, cannot be understated.

Sometimes we want to hold on to our parent’s imprint, sometimes we want to banish it.

But remember that we are firstly men, and secondly sons.

We cannot escape our parent’s influence, but our personality is ours and ours alone.

Fatherhood

First and foremost, it is about being present.

Children want to feel the four walls of their parents around them as they grow up. We are their environment.

Children view their security through layers of good adults.

We need to be a consistently present and kind feature in their lives.

Fatherhood is not about quick rewards. It is the ultimate example of delayed gratification.

If we can put our children’s needs ahead of our own, we will be gifting them the highest act of love and a platform for a lifetime of security.

I think we are at a precipitous moment as men in the twenty first century.

Society has changed and our roles are changing within it.

But we should show great caution when listening to those voices who try telling us that someone took something away from us. They did not.

We should be wary of the voices of toxic masculinity, who present themselves as an answer to the complexities of social fluidity in our time.

Because if we do everything with love for ourselves and respect for others, we don’t need the toxic role models, the misogynistic groups of frightened and angry men and the supposedly disenfranchised alpha males.

We just need a clear idea of what type of men we want to be.

And if we think firstly about the type of person that we want to be, before we think about the type of men that we want to be, the rest should follow.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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